Springing Forward........

I have more nice pictures this Spring than nice words it seems. My words this Spring would probably fall unwelcome on some ears. Narrow, ungenerous behavior exacts a price on psyches and relationships, and those who wound with words and actions cannot, or do not care to see the long term damaging effects on once-loving relationships until they are lost.

In our lives, we come across many circumstances in which we have wronged someone or someone has wronged us. As we grow, there comes a time in our lives when the opportunity arises, giving us the chance to forgive them. We have all heard the saying to 'Forgive and Forget'. Well, human nature does not allow for the mind to forget easily, so really it is 'Forgive and Accept'.

When we decide to forgive someone, this is a selfless act of kindness to that person and to ourselves. We are forgiving the person and not necessarily the act that was committed. This is self healing. When we are releasing negative energy and breathing in positive energy, we are looking away from the past and toward the future. In forgiving, we accept what happened and move forward; and really, moving forward is what it is all about. The same energy comes when someone forgives us. Even if we have to approach that person and ask for forgiveness, it is OK because we are moving forward. If they forgive us, we also must forgive ourselves and recognize that we have grown and moved forward on our path.

There is so much emotion tied to this. We may feel that something is unforgivable.....and that is OK, too. That is our choice, and once again, if it is truly unforgivable we can accept it and move on. We must not let the negative hold onto us, but release it and move forward into the positive power that is out there. Many things happen throughout our lives. Some are done accidentally and some on purpose, and those we will sort out and do what is needed in order to move forward. This is all part of loving ourselves enough to move forward and release the negative and receive the positive. Forgiveness of yourself and others is a cleansing of sorts, like detoxifying your soul. Again, love yourself enough to move forward. Forgiveness is not a weakness. It is one of the most courageous things a person can do for themselves.......

Life has been full and satisfying. We are joyful and filled with gratitude that Mother Earth has greened up once again and her abundance springs forth! Green and growing grass prompted Art to adapt his oldest piece of equipment to run on his newest tractor. "Arthur The Inventor" is forever seeking to reinvent. He is supremely adaptable, and from his fertile mind optimism springs eternal. We have owned a #1 John Deere sickle bar mower since we bought our farm nearly 40 years ago. This was the first tractor-mounted model of mower that John Deere ever produced! Other mowers have come and gone here, but the sickle bar mower has a prominent, specialized place in our arsenal of grass-tamers. We use it to cut grass that is unable to be harvested along the very edges of our fields, to neaten up the road berms and ditch banks after haymaking and, more recently, to cut the high grass that grows along the shoreline of our lake. Without this mower, with its cantilevered cutter bar that juts out from the right side of the tractor (forcing one to always make clockwise revolutions), we would have to perform this exhausting task using a gas-powered Stihl string trimmer, or risk upsetting a valuable tractor into the lake! Art re-engineered the #1 using 2 nuts, 1 piece of custom-bent black iron pipe and an extension PTO bar, enabling the mower to snap onto the quick-hitch and run on the modern JD4720.....super slick!!

The business end of the JD4720
with the JD#1 mower...... on the move!

Innovation......The American Way!!

600' of ditch bank mowed along the main road
saves PennDot the trouble!
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Another year, another garden. Hope springs eternal and this year we've planted many veggies that we hope will all make it to the table! I'm sure I'm missing something here, but I believe we have planted Vidalia, white, yellow & red onions, red and white garlic, curly parsley, basil, dill, arugula, romaine, mesclun lettuce mix, spinach, a dozen plants of 4 types of disease-resistant tomatoes, red bell peppers, Ichiban and white eggplant, red beets, carrots, 8-Ball zucchini, yellow straight-neck squash, cucumbers, tomatillos, sweet potatoes, Russian blue, red and Yukon Gold potatoes. Yes, I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but here are some photos of the early vegetable garden and also some spring flowers.

The early spring garden from the west side.

Tomato plants in wire cages, with potatoes behind them.

Garlics, with potatoes behind them.

Basil plants.

Chives among the Hostas.

Spring Daisies!

A lot of chirping going on in this Sparrow nest!

Clematis reaching up to the Sparrows.

Mo and Art heading down to the lake to trim the banks.

A&M Cook, Jolico Farm, Somerset PA
100% Solar Powered since 1978!!
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.....And finally, I could not publish this post without attempting to express my personal, gut-wrenching anguish and fist-clenching anger over the worst and most horrible environmental catastrophe to befall our country, and possibly the most widespread and worst toxic despoilment ever to occur upon our planet. Like everyone else, I feel utterly helpless in the face of this disaster. I pray a lot and watch the news for signs of hope that there will be a turning point, that the storm of oil gushing forth from the belly of Mother Earth will begin to slow. I Tweet about all the news, the good and the bad, trying to spread awareness of what man has wrought in his insatiable quest for OIL. It saddens me that most people who are not living in the reality of the holocaust occurring in and on the Gulf Coast, are going about their everyday lives with barely any notice taken or expressed of this tragedy that is affecting so many millions of creatures..... man among them.

I ask myself, how does one go about forgiving an accident, an incident, acts of omission or commission, a corporation, a drilling rig, a fire, a mechanical failure, a "situation"? Should I go through the same process of forgiveness as I would towards a living person? Who or what deserves a punch in the nose here? After weeks of listening to my higher self I come full circle and repeat the last step in the forgiveness recipe above:

There is so much emotion tied to this. We may feel that someTHING is UNforgivable.....and that is OK, too. That is our choice, and once again, if it is truly unforgivable we CAN accept it and move on. We must NOT let the negative hold onto us, but RELEASE it and MOVE forward into the POSITIVE power that is out there. Many things happen throughout our lives. Some are done accidentally and some on purpose, and those we will sort out and do what is needed in order to move forward. This is all part of loving ourselves enough to move forward and release the negative and receive the positive. Forgiveness of yourself and others is a cleansing of sorts, like detoxifying your soul. Again, love yourself enough to move forward. Forgiveness is not a weakness. It is one of the most courageous things a person can do for themselves....... Does this also go for oil companies? I hope so.

Family Garden ~ by Hank Hudepohl

Tell me again about your garden
Tell me how you planted, in the small
flat of mountain land, corn seed

and bean seed, how your finger poked the soil
then you dropped in three dark bean seeds
for every yellow seed of corn.

Trees and mountains collared your land,
but the fenced garden opened freely
to sun and warm summer rains.

Your potato rows bulged in July. You ached
from digging them up, your hands down in dirt,
the cool lump of a tuber, brown-spotted,

just recovered, a greeting, like shaking hands.
Baskets full of bumpy brown potatoes filled
your basement until fall, until you gave

away what you could, throwing out the rest.
You gave away honey from the white hive too,
that box of bees beside the garden,

honey stored in Mason jars, a clearest honey
nectar from lin tree blossoms and wild flowers.
The bright taste of honey on the tongue

spoke of the place, if a place can be known
by the activity of bees and a flavor in the mouth,
if a person can be known by small acts

such as these, such as the way you rocked
summer evenings from a chair on the porch
tending your inner garden, eyes closed.

"Family Garden" by Hank Hudepohl from The Journey of Hands. © Word Press, 2007. Reprinted with permission.

May Day........the 1st day of May

On this glorious, warm, breezy May Day, I offer for your reading pleasure the words of Garrison Keillor. I especially love the poem he chose for his post, "Blackbirds" by Julie Cadwallader Staub. I hope you read it with the feeling with which it was written. It struck a deep chord within me. Blackbirds

Earth Day 2010, Mending Fences, Muskrats, Dogs and Daffodils....

I remember very well the very first Earth Day in 1970. We attended the events held at Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh on a beautiful, sunny Spring day. We were newly married just six months previously and we had not yet given serious thought to the "Back To The Land Movement" that was to be the impetus for the search for, and ultimate purchase, of our farm. All of that was still off in the future for us. But, in retrospect, those first Earth Day events held 40 years ago, were really the catalyst for the shape our lives would ultimately take. I like to think that many others' lives were changed by the new awareness of Earth and our environment that was birthed that year.

There was much clean-up to do this spring on the farm. One of the first big chores was to remove the 30-year-old post and rail fence that the heavy snows this winter had literally turned to toothpicks. Art asked me how badly I wanted him to repair that old stretch of fence that had no purpose other than aesthetics. I caved in and told him that we didn't need to continue to maintain things that had outlived their purpose just for the sake of rustic charm. So, with the welcome help of our brother Hank and our trusty Stihl chainsaw, we removed about 100 feet of fencing. We saved the salvageable posts and rails for 'parts' and cut the rest into firewood, and the job was completed in short order. We realize we are not getting younger so we now think in terms that human energy spent on maintaining everything could be conserved and expended on maintaining the more necessary things. It required a lot of mowing and trimming around those fence posts. After every hay crop was removed that lovely-looking fenceline required weed-whacking, a tiring, dirty, sneezy job. You know, I thought I would miss the view of that silvery-grey fence that for over 30 years marked the edge of the hayfield above our barn. But the eye gets used to what is in 'the now' and the brain forgets how things used to be.......and this is progress!

Our newest tractor, the John Deere 4720, is a 4-wheel drive workhorse that enables us to maintain our farm, which is really a mini-municipality! We have our own water system, sewage system and road system of paved, gravel and dirt roads that lead to all the fields on the property. All of the roads require regular maintenance as they are subject to washing from heavy rains and snow melt. They all have ditches for water runoff that regularly get clogged with leaves, sticks and gravel debris. Our 4720's high-lift bucket is put into service to keep the ditches clear, and we use the wide blade that fits on the rear of the tractor to taper and level the roadways before spreading fresh stone and gravel. We also use the tractor to pull a heavy water-filled roller that presses down the rock and gravel, compacting and hardening the roadbeds. We had a good many downed tree limbs to clean up this spring and the high lift was perfect for carrying the tree sections up to the woodshed, where we cut them up and stacked them to age the firewood, which we will later use to heat our home.

Another big job this spring, which seems to be ongoing at this point, is Art's war on the Muskrats that have invaded our lake. We hate to kill anything and only resort to trapping when nothing else works. Even so, trapping Muskrats is tricky and cruel. Muskrats ruin dams and destroy valuable water empoundments. Our newest plan for Muskrat control is to fill the holes they dig into the sides of our lakeshore with large stones. This is a huge undertaking, as the lake is 1/4 mile in diameter; over 1500 feet of shoreline! Every day we find new holes. We gather large rocks and dump them over the holes. The Muskrats then dig more holes in new places. We then gather more rocks and repeat the process. I anticipate that by summers' end, we will have hauled enough rock to completely cover the shoreline of the lake. Eventually I know that Arthur will win this war because he always accomplishes what he sets out to do, one way or another. He is a Taurus. He has that kind of patience.





So far we've planted Vidalia onion plants and 3 types of garlic. Soil testing revealed that our organic garden needed a 40 pound dose of bone meal to raise the phosphorous level this spring. It is a messy, dusty job to apply the bone meal to the soil using a very scientific method of application........broadcasting it by the handful and then rototilling it in with the help of the BSA 720, a workhorse of another color!


So, here at Jolico Farm, every day is Earth Day. That's what farmers do.....take care of the earth. Millions of Americans who didn’t know what “the environment” was in 1969 discovered in 1970 that they were environmentalists. Millions of people make choices about lifestyles, diet, housing, automobiles, and even the number of children they have because of thinking that began at an Earth Day program. The Earth Day philosophy must welcome those who are just beginning to recycle as well as those involved in the pursuit of ambitious environmental goals. I believe that it is up to every single human being living on Mother Earth to love her and tread softly upon her, keep her clean, and know that we each have an impact and we each leave a footprint. We can't all be involved in writing legislation involving the environment, but we can use our votes by electing officials who have a green conscience. When I see trash on the roadsides, illegal dumping, polluted streams, belching smokestacks, wastefulness, unnecessary packaging of products, people who don't recycle and reuse.....it makes me sad. I try every day to set an example for others, to spread the word, to educate, to spread enlightenment. Won't you help me? Together we could do so very much more.........Thanks!

Spring!……proof there is life after death.

I sit high on the hill above the farm, my dog at my feet, the windmill at my back pumping away in the warm breeze. I commune with my late father, whose ashes I scattered on this spot almost 25 years ago. I was his ‘oldest buddy’ and we adored each other. He was the smartest man I have ever known. He never once let me down. He didn't call me his ‘best’ buddy, as he had 5 other children and he loved us all. However, I was his oldest child and, therefore, his ‘oldest buddy’. We relied on each other. My mother died when I was an infant, leaving just the two of us. He took me to work with him, and by the age of four I knew the name and purpose of every tool in his workshop and would hand him what he asked with the precision of a surgical technician. He taught me to drive a car when I was nine, though we never told anybody about that…..it was our secret. We both loved dogs and it was to him I brought the strays I rescued over the years, knowing my (step)mother would never let me keep them...but he would overrule her.

So it was I, his oldest buddy, who tended to him in his last years when nobody else came around because of his short temper and cutting words...brought on by the constant pain he suffered. Even so, he was ever loving, appreciative and kind to me. He always commented on how good I smelled to him whenever I hugged him tightly. We would go out for lunch and I would drive; he would direct our procession as we stopped here and there to do his small errands. Toward the end of his days, he would sit in the car and leisurely watch the people while I would pick up his groceries or medications, or the beer he enjoyed icy cold.

I think about my father as I sit on the high hill, where I will have his essence for company, his wisdom to support me and his spirit to protect me for the rest of my days. It is in this way he returns to life for me, like the miracle of Spring, which always returns after the dead of Winter.

February, the dead of winter.........

Asleep, anesthetized, barren, buried, cold, cut off, deadened, dormant, frigid, inactive, inanimate, inert, inoperable, lifeless, lost, numbed, paralyzed, senseless, spent, spiritless, sterile, still, tired, unresponsive, unanimated, vanished, wasted, wearied, worn out, winter......

This has been an especially hard winter here in northeastern America. The burning, numbing, eye-watering cold has combined with virtually unremitting snowfall to suppress spirits, break machinery and kill the weak, the old and the ill. We have lost several cherished pets over the years during this heartless month, when graves cannot even be dug in the frozen earth.

"If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character....Would you slow down? Or speed up?" ~ Chuck Palahniuk.

Ask me this question in February and I am apt to choose the speedy costume change; but do not suppose that I am depressed. In so many ways I enjoy the solitude of being housebound. In early winter I anticipate the quietude of day after week of enforced rest. In Spring, Summer and Fall, I plan many diversionary wintertime projects to keep myself happily occupied. I like to cook and bake and make big cauldrons of nourishing soups for us, for friends, and for the freezer. I choose good-weather days to restock my pantry, darting from house, to car, to stores, and scurry back home again. I take my vitamin D (the sunshine vitamin!). I wait for spring. I nest. I hole up. I look out of the windows a lot. I dress warmly for my daily trek to the barn to feed the cats, and every few hours I go out to shovel away the snow from my doors. If I can keep some semblance of order in my life, the cold death of winter cannot come for me in February.

However, FOUR blizzards in one month are mentally and physically HARD to deal with. I cannot even find words to describe the last few weeks, as they have run together endlessly. So I will just share some of my favorite recent photos.....

Art doing some X-Country skiing. Winter always starts out fun!!

Mo enjoys an invigorating run. It's so beautiful outdoors and it's fun to play in the fresh snow!!

Whoa! Nor'easter dumps 31" of heavy, wet snow on 2/5 and 2/6/10. Gotta get down to the shed, fire up the big John Deere and blower and clear this mess up!

It took all day and proved too much for our old snowblower, but between shoveling, plowing, blowing and pushing, we finally got the driveway and lanes opened up to the barn.

We are cleaned up and ready for the next one!
Take a picture of us, Mom!!

New snowblower, an MK Martin Meteor made in Canada, delivered on 2/12/10. We're ready for the next blizzard...............
Bring it on, Mother Nature!!

Wow, we were just kidding around, Mother Nature!!! Can you make it stop now? It's 2/16/10 and our fences are now almost buried under 50" of snow that fell over the past 12 days.

By 2/19/10 our back roof is holding over 5' of heavy snow and another Nor'easter is predicted. We don't want to stress this roof any further, so the two of us climb out there and proceed to shovel the roof clear of approximately 22,000 pounds of snow.

The snow continues, unabated. Icicles obstruct our views. The wind howls and deep drifts form, making travel barely possible. This is our new paradigm. Nothing melts. The snow just grows deeper. We are becoming entombed. We haven't seen the sun in over 3 weeks. We discuss climate change and El Nino. We decide that, though we're much better equipped mechanically to handle severe storms than we were years ago, we are older now. And we lament that we are not as physically strong as we were when we were young. We are amazed at our resiliency. We pat ourselves on the back and keep on shoveling. We discover that by some perverse miracle, shoveling snow actually makes our aching backs feel better.

Another week of snowfall. Every day it seems we get another 4-6" of fresh powder. We have lost track of the measurements and are simply awed by the sheer dimensions of so much snow.

Meteorologists called it a Snowicane - is that even a word? On 2/25/10 we have high winds, blowing and drifting snow, and finally our roads are narrowed to one lane and are drifting shut. Winds gust over 60 miles per hour. Now we are truly isolated. We are officially 'snowed in'. The county's snowplowing protocol goes into blizzard mode. The plows only clear the main arteries and snow emergency routes now. The secondary and back roads are cast adrift until the storm abates. Nothing moves on the road except for an occasional snowmobile and it is very quiet when the wind finally stops howling.

We heat our home with wood, and we've made some big withdrawals this month from our wood stockpile. We have burned 6-7 cords so far, but there's plenty left to finish out the winter.

Mo continues to enjoy all the snow, proving it's great to live a dog's life at Jolico Farm! He doesn't miss an opportunity to accompany us outdoors and he has added a new word to his vocabulary. The command, "DIG IT, MO", sends him digging into a snowbank to loosen the packed snow so I can shovel it away.


So, when all is said and done, there is always the beauty of last summer's geraniums, blooming anew in the back mud room, getting a jump on Spring. They are proof positive that there is life after the dead of winter.......... if we can just survive the month of February.

The Winter of 2010.....

Scientists knew last summer that this was going to be an El Nino year. But it wasn't until winter set in that its effects really hit the United States. Turns out it's not just a run of bad luck. What's behind a lot of this winter's weather is El Nino, the tropical weather pattern that starts in the Pacific. Major snowstorms are set to bury the mid-Atlantic states this weekend after record snowfalls in December. Last month California was awash in rain. The Gulf states have seen heavy weather lately as well.

So, why didn't somebody tell me?? Why didn't I know about this?? I am a weather watcher (as well as an animal tracker and nature being). I read and listen to all things weather-related. Why didn't I hear about this until now?? I can only assume it was a well kept secret or a subject so low down on the news radar that it failed to make us sit up and take notice until the winter was well upon us. Of course, my higher self knew we were in for a beating this winter, based on the cool, damp, blight-ridden Summer-That-Wasn't of 2009 - but my analog human mind just didn't want to believe all the signs that were, in hindsight, so patently clear.

But life goes on despite the season, or maybe even because of the season. The 2010 Swearing-In ceremony of the Sipesville Volunteer Fire Dept was held on schedule on January 9th. Art was honored, as always, to administer the oath of office to the company's officers. These are all-volunteer responders to structure and vehicle fires, forest and brush fires, Haz-Mat calls, vehicle accidents, storm damage calls. They provide traffic control during emergencies, staging for medical helicopter evacuations, they pump out basements during flooding......you name the disaster and these men and women are the very first responders on the scene with their presence and equipment, training, knowledge and bravery. I have been writing grants for this department for the last 6-7 years under the US Assistance to Firefighters program and have been lucky to have been able to obtain new firefighting and crash and rescue equipment for them, including in 2008, a new 4 wheel drive brush/attack truck which they put into service in early 2009. They are currently awaiting word on the 2009/2010 grant request for a new tanker truck to replace their 1978 tanker which must be retired this year, as it is no longer safe to use on calls. A second grant was also submitted for a CAF foam system for use on two of their vehicles. Both of these grants were written last May and there has been no word yet on whether they will be awarded, so we remain hopeful. I was thrilled when they honored me at last year's banquet by naming me an honorary member of the department!

On January 23rd we attended a wonderful dinner with Art's co-workers at Helen's Restaurant at 7-Springs Resort. This is their traditional holiday dinner that is always held about a month after the holidays! Actually, it is a much better time to get together as everybody is always too busy during the holidays to go to another holiday party! The food was wonderfully decadent and Helen's, situated in a balconied ski lodge provided an elegant ambiance for a festive and fun dinner party for ten of us.

Cat grass salad that Kitty, Mo and Mimi like to eat this time of year!

Kitty Cook - around 10 years old now.

When it's so cold, even Mo doesn't want to go out!

Snow sure is getting deep!
Here we go again....what number blizzard is this?

I love this Will Barnet print! It so depicts our menagerie and was a gift from Mimi's mom, Muff, many years ago. Muff just had rotator cuff surgery yesterday after a bad fall on the ice a couple of weeks ago. She's hurting and she's nauseous from the pain medicine right now. Mimi is staying here with us and she and Moses are having a blast together! Right now both dogs are stretched out and sleeping on separate couches in the living room, no doubt due to having expended lots of energy playing all day long, and maybe due in some part to this huge low pressure system that is burying us in snow again. Art is on call this weekend and I pray it stays quiet for his sake. I also pray the internet remains functional as it enables him to do video arraignments from home rather than having to drive to his office as had once been the norm.

A quick update on Groucho the Cat! We found her a wonderful home with Loni, a first-time cat owner, who promptly changed Groucho's name to Peppermint Patty! Good luck and lots of love to Loni and "Patty" in their new, long and loving life together.

Healing prayers go out to Muff, Floy McClintock, Don Brougher, and of course, all the people of Haiti who are daily in our thoughts and prayers, as well as to all people and creatures who are sick, hurting and downtrodden.

A touching poem to share...

At the Vet's
by Maura Stanton

The German shepherd can't lift his hindquarters
off the tiled floor. His middle-aged owner
heaves his dog over his shoulder, and soon
two sad voices drift from the exam room
discussing heart failure, kidneys, and old age
while a rushing woman pants into the office
grasping a terrier with trembling legs
she found abandoned in a drainage ditch.
It's been abused, she says, and sits down,
The terrier curled in her lap, quaking
as the memory of something bad returns and returns.
She strokes its ears, whispering endearments
while my two cats, here for routine checkups,
peer through the mesh of their old green carrier,
the smell of fear so strong on their damp fur
I taste it as I breathe. Soon the woman,
Like the receptionist with her pen in mid-air,
Is listening, too, hushed by the duet
swelling in volume now, the vet's soprano
counterpointed by the owner's baritone
as he pleads with her to give him hope, the vet
trying to be kind, rephrasing the truth
over and over until it becomes a lie
they both pretend to accept. The act's over.
His dog's to stay behind for ultrasound
and kidney tests, and the man, his face
whipped by grief as if he were caught in a wind,
hurries past us and out the front door,
leaving the audience—cats, terrier, people—
sunk in their places, too stunned to applaud.

"At the Vet's" by Maura Stanton, from Immortal Sofa. © University of Illinois Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission by The Writer's Almanac, January 16, 2010.

Snow......a New Year, a New Decade, a Winter Wedding.....and more snow.

Well, it's winter so I guess we should expect some snow. However, it has been snowing here nonstop since New Year's Eve, 7 days straight now with no end in sight. Another 8" is predicted for tonight with blizzard-like conditions to follow bringing gale-force winds and downright dangerously cold temperatures.

This poor young redtail hawk has been hunting small songbirds at our feeders from a perch in the locust tree in our front yard. The wind and cold are so severe and the snow so deep that there is no small game to be seen, and the hawk is hungry. It's easy to see why people and animals become distressed and depressed in winter.Our back fences are almost buried under 3' drifts! The poor birds puff up for warmth awaiting their turn at the bird feeders, which we keep constantly filled for them.

We always look forward to winter as a time to pursue pleasurable, mostly indoor activities like reading seed catalogs, novels, that stack of magazines piling up since last summer, watching movies and cooking great meals. Outdoor activities include shoveling snow, blowing snow, hauling in firewood, hauling out the furnace ashes, sweeping the snow off the solar panels, walks in the snow, bundling up just to go out to the mailbox, and occasionally, if the snow is just right and the wind isn't blowing too hard, some cross country skiing just to get the blood moving! Simple trips to the grocery store are combined with quick errands and always dinner at a restaurant, because one never knows when the next weather window of opportunity to escape the confines of the farm will present itself - smile!
The lake lies encased in thick ice and the gazebo slumbers under a blanket of white. I took this picture before New Year's when we could still walk down the hill to the lake. Now the snow is too deep for walking.Art clears snow from the driveway - a daily chore. Mimi and Mo have a blast as they romp in snow that is over their heads! However, this does not affect their exuberance as they blow off steam and enjoy each others' company!

Art was honored to preside over the marriage of our friends Jon Kates and Peggie Page on the first Saturday of the New Year and New Decade of 2010. The ceremony was held in Pittsburgh at the William Penn Hotel on January 2nd.

Peggie's daughter Sarah attended her mother as matron of honor and Jon's son Sam performed admirably as best man! It was such a joyous occasion, a celebration in toasts, song and well-wishes to the love and married life of a beautiful couple.

Well, another foot of snow has fallen since the night of the Kates wedding. We loaded another half-cord of wood into the basement yesterday and made a grocery run last evening......even grabbed a bite at the Italian Oven before scurrying back to the warmth and safety of home. I thought I'd do some blog posting today just to let the world know we're still here and thinking about you all. Here's a visual gift to enjoy.......what could better signify the promise and beauty of Spring?